Obama's SOTU - So So....

The rhetoric was soaring - often even Reaganesque- especially as it accented the notes of nationalism, and the promise of the nation's future. Of course, this is what any President delivering his SOTU aspires to. Only a guy like the fictional character 'Bulworth' would tell Americans the truth: that their nation is caught in a gulf of inequality from which it will never emerge (given the 'pay to play' system), it's in decline because of corroding infrastructure (needing $1.6 TRILLION to repair - according to the American Society of Civil Engineers) and the energy promise of fracking is about like fool's gold.

Let's take the last first. Recall from last year's State of the Union, Obama sang the praises of natural gas exploration via fracking.  He actually expatiated on a  "100 year supply of natural gas that's right beneath our feet" and the goal to "develop it safely".  This time he even rivaled that, claiming the U.S, is now nearly energy independent and did briefly mention the need to "safely" extract the energy, but of course the evidence is not there. Anyone who saw Erin Brockovitch's  map - displayed on Bill Maher's REAL TIME last Friday - of the contaminated water sites from fracking would get that. 

The frackers claim, and the corpora-media have attempted to bolster, the notion that "fracking is safe for water". But IF it is, why is fracking exempt from compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act? Surely, NO exemption is needed if it was truly safe! This is like the misbegotten trope that GMO foods don't need to be labeled because they're "proven safe". Well, how about just humoring me. You know, I'd like to KNOW what I'm ingesting!

More importantly fracking does NOT solve the problem of climate change /global warming as Obama claimed last night. Indeed, it makes it worse.  People-citizens need to process this, and I suggest they get hold of  Richard Heinberg's 'Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise Imperils Our Future'.

As Heinberg observes  (p. 110):

Kerogen is not oil. It is better thought of as an oil precursor that was insufficiently cooked by geologic processes. If we want to turn it into oil, we have to finish the process nature started: that involves heating the kerogen to a high temperature for a long time. And that in turn takes energy- lots of it, whether supplied by hydroelectricity, nuclear power plants, natural gas, or the kerogen itself. Therefore the EROEI in processing oil shale is bound to be pitifully low. According to the best study to date, by Cutler Cleveland and Peter O'Connor, the EROEI for oil shale production would be about 2:1. That tells us that oil from kerogen will be far more expensive than regular crude oil.

Recall 'EROEI' denotes energy returned on energy invested.

Heinberg  also disposes of the myth of "100 years of natural gas".

He observes, for example(ibid.), that "a study of the EROEI for electrical heating of methane hydrate deposits between 1000 and 1500 meters deep yielded ratios from 2:1 up to 5:1, depending on the source of the electricity"

Also, the methane extracted is a major contributor to accelerated global warming. It is not innocuous as Obama appears to believe. Hence, his clarion call for attention to climate change while approving of natural gas fracking is exponentially cognitively dissonant.

Obama's challenge to the Reepo congress to reinstate unemployment benefits was spot on, but his praising of the "budget deal" in December didn't mesh with that call. The fact is that deal was an abomination and gave away the store to the Repukes by leaving unemployment extension out of the plan.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/12/latest-budget-deal-seeks-to-preserve.html

Now the Dems call for reinstating benefits but that's like shutting the barn door after the cow's vamonosed.  The time to have ensured the benefits was when leverage existed - at the time of the budget dealing. Not now when the Reeps will simply ignore all calls .....oh, unless "equal cuts" can be found elsewhere. (How about the military? Like that F35 white elephant?)

The most stirring part of the address was the promise to "take action", presumably by Executive orders - not Executive "actions" - which are far weaker. (Recall JFK's Exec. ORDER 11,110 actually approved the printing of U.S. Notes outside the Federal Reserve system. It translated to $4.2 bllion such notes being generated.)

But as The UK Guardian observed:

 the executive orders will have only limited impact in comparison with legislative action, and his speech laid bare how powerless Obama is in the face of intransigence from the Republican-controlled House.

Finally, the one inspiring note I wanted to hear was sounded when Obama proclaimed the need to end the fiasco in Afghanistan, and the necessity to cease "permanent war".  However, whether he's true to his word here will depend on whether ALL troops leave at the end of this year, or some new deal is struck that allows 12,000 or so to remain another ten years.

THAT is not halting perma-war!

Doctors Prevented from Warning Patients of Fracking Chemicals?

Scene from the documentary ‘Gasland’ in which a homeowner lights his tap water on fire.

Barely one day after the news of a 10,000+ gallon toxic spill near Parachute, Colo., threatening the spring mountain runoff into the Colorado River and the state's water supply, the news that Colorado doctors have been muzzled came as a shocker. According to a Denver Post article yesterday (‘Colorado Docs Chafe at Secrecy Oath Required’, p. 4A) doctors in our state must now sign a “confidentiality pledge” in order to obtain information on chemicals used for fracking by the oil and gas industry. This is information they may need to take care of their patients and protect the public health, i.e. from rampaging carcinogenics which we may already may be drinking (after 555 toxic spills the past two years, most within 1500’ of ground water supplies)

As the Post article notes:   “A state requirement that doctors sign Form 35, developed last year by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, aims to protect industry trade secrets while also letting doctors fulfill duties.

But the Colorado Medical Society contends the form does not protect doctors from punishment for sharing information about chemicals with other medical professionals and public health authorities. No doctor has signed the form.”

And why should they when it’s obviously a blatant muzzle? A device to protect the toxic polluters in the fracking industry so they're allowed to run amuck in our state, poisoning our already dwindling water supplies as they use them up (with 5 million gals. wasted per fracked well). The fact that two state departments, ostensibly with the mandate to protect the public welfare, are working in collusion with the gas –oil industry is an abomination enough. Hickenlooper, the governor, and all his clones ought to be ashamed of themselves!


But now to add insult to injury and try to muzzle doctors is beyond even the level of atrocity. As one doctor (Michael Pramenko of Grand Junction) quoted in the piece put it:

“I would have very mixed feelings about signing a form that tells me I could not be proactive about sharing this information with the Health Department.”

He went on to add

“To me, if there’s a chemical in the environment and there are potentially other people being exposed it does not make sense from a health standpoint to not be sharing that information.”

Then there is the very likely scenario, as noted by a Medical Society attorney (ibid.), that one or more patients could be presenting symptoms attributable to an unknown toxic chemical. Perhaps a rash that won’t abate, vomiting, dizziness …who knows? Who can forget the horrific California pollution story on which the film ‘Erin Brockovitch’ was based. Brockovitch, in that story, finally turned up the chemical (hexavalent chromium) that was causing hundreds of cancers in a small town. Of course industry wants to keep such things secret! That’s their warp and woof!


In a way this latest 'Form' 35 maneuver is evocative of the ploy used by the toxic sludge fertilizer industry when they attempted to halt publication of the book  'Toxic Sludge is Good For You' - the handbook for recognizing all PR meisters and hacks. Especially, the mutants that want to try to convince the average American that putting shit mixed with benzene, dioxins etc. all over crops is good for them. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, the authors, noted the efforts of the sludge industry to try to get them to back off, insisting that all the materials in the sludge were "organic" waste, not toxic. But when the authors investigated they found out differently!  Not only was the sludge laced with hundreds of unpronounceable toxic industrial chemicals, but sewage as well. And they exposed the fact the producers were attempting to use it as a cheap way to get rid of waste-effluent. Hey, why not? If you can make $$$ from it! Never mind the ten thousand kids that get gastro-enteritis!

Look, folks, we have a mounting battle with these vermin as cancer rates ramp up across the nation. We need to force our political hacks, wherever they reside, to back off from promoting the poisoning of us all, as well as adding to our costly health care burden. Don't do it for me, do it for yourselves, your kids, their kids...

If nothing is done, and we just sit back and allow these industrial energy maggots to crap all over us, what do you suppose the world will be like in 10 years? In 20? Do you want your kids suffering from enormous liver tumors, or pancreatic cancer? THINK about that! And then find out if fracking is going on in your state and if it is pull out the stops to halt it. And while you're at it,. make sure to keep pressure on Obama not to sign that Keystone XL pipeline deal either. It's the ONE thing he can do without the need for a congressional vote.

But it does take balls.